


Of Copper Braids and Safety

by tricia868



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28308828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricia868/pseuds/tricia868
Summary: Sandry and Daja come up with the idea for Tris's mage kit.
Relationships: Trisana Chandler & Daja Kisubo & Briar Moss & Sandrilene fa Toren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Of Copper Braids and Safety

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laughing_Phoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laughing_Phoenix/gifts).



“I wonder if we could do something about your hair,” Sandry mused as she accepted dishes to dry them, eyeing Tris’s short mess of curls. She’d neatened up the cut last time Tris took scissors to her own hair, but there was only so much anyone could do about the length.

Recognizing the dangers of Sandry with a project in sight, Tris brandished a suds-covered plate in a warding gesture, “There’s nothing to be done about it! Any longer than this, and it will grow lightning in it.”

Daja, bent over a project at the kitchen table, looked up to ask, “Did you ever try braiding it? I wonder if that would help some.”

Tris shook her head, rinsing the plate and passing it to Sandry. “Not little braids like yours, but I tried a braid. It still grew lightning, and all the ends started escaping. It was a mess.”

Sandry considered for a moment, looking thoughtfully at Tris rather than at the dish in her hands. “I wonder. The problem is that magic forms around your hair, so what if we… oh, I don’t know. Warded it somehow. And we could place the spells in braids the way I do with thread!”

Daja set aside the complex twists of wire she’d been playing with, intrigued by the notion. “And I think smaller braids would be easier to manage than one big one. Less possibility of your hair escaping. I bet the hints of Sandry’s magic in yours would let you manage braid magic. We _are_ still woven together.”

That’s why they came up with the borders on that magical weaving, after all. To keep their magics connected but not bleeding into each other uncontrollably.

“And just how do you propose to test this?” Tris asked, washing the last of the breakfast dishes and handing it off to Sandry. “There’s hardly enough _here_ to braid!”

Sandry retorted immediately, “Well then, we’ll just have to plan it until you get another couple inches for us to work with. It’s better to have time to plan the spells before we put them on you, anyway!” The three girls looked at each other, then burst out laughing. Briar’s recent experiment with tattoos was proof of _that_. They didn’t work out the way he intended at all.

“I wonder,” said Daja slowly, “if we’re already doing magic to keep things _out_ , what if we could do magic to keep things _in_? Like _Tsaw’ha mimanders_ do with winds in threads.”

Latching onto the idea immediately, Sandry hung the towel and clasped her hands together. “Oh! What a good idea. Then you’d always have some of the weather you need with you, Tris.”

By this point, Tris knew there was no escape, and in spite of herself, she was intrigued by the challenge. She sat down at the table across from Daja. “Niko told me that _mimanders_ spend years of study just on winds in order to coax wind into knots. Do you think I could manage it? And with more kinds of weather than just wind?”

Daja shrugged. “That’s true. But they keep telling us that our magic, and the way we combined it, is unprecedented. Might as well see what we can do.”

“I’ll get some thread,” Sandry announced decisively, “and then let’s go outside. We can practice on that.”

Briar, weeding in the garden, glanced up when all his sisters came out of the house and sat down together, heads bent to look at something in Tris’s lap. “What are you working on?”

“Seeing whether Tris can figure out how to keep weather in braids,” Sandry called back cheerfully. “Then maybe she could use her hair for storage instead of cutting it all off!”

Tris gave a long-suffering sigh. Briar, clearly deciding that the girls’ project was much more interesting than weeding, stopped what he was doing and came over to join them. He tugged one of Tris’s curls on the way past. “Not much hair here to work with, Coppercurls.”

“At least I won’t be leaping into any spells on my body without testing them first,” Tris retorted, grouchy as ever, but not protesting as Briar dropped to sit in front of her to get a look at what she’s doing.

Unbothered, he wiggled his fingers in her direction. “I didn’t _mean_ to do it, but I kind of like them.”

“Niko didn’t think I could do it. He said that _mimanders_ have to convince the wind that the threads they’re held in are really open air, and it takes a decade to learn that. That there’s a reason only one in ten _mimanders_ specializing in wind lives to be a journeyman.” Tris had no desire to repeat her experiment with the tides, pushed too far and too weak to walk for a week. And that was getting off lightly, even once she added in the lecture from Niko as additional punishment. It could be worse.

“So we’ll help,” Daja promised, steady and serious. “And if you seem too caught up in the magic, we’ll anchor you and pull you back.”

“Don’t try it alone,” Briar agreed.

Sandry nodded. “We’re strongest together.”

Her experiments that day were, as expected, an exercise in frustration. She failed to bind the breezes into threads at all, or no sooner had she managed it than they escaped. Daja’s steady patience, Sandry’s stubbornness, and Briar’s good-natured teasing kept her from biting anyone’s nose off, but only just.

She waited several months, until she’d managed to braid up a breeze under her foster siblings’ watchful eyes, before taking the project to Niko for his advice. He was disgruntled to be caught off-guard, but his innate curiosity about various types of magic caught up quickly enough. He peppered her with questions, and she managed to mostly avoid a lecture. Lark was interested too, in the intersection between Sandry’s magic and Tris’s.

It was the better part of a year before they were sure enough to lay any spells on Tris’s hair. In the meantime, she’d stored winds and rain and lightning in braids of thread. She was experimenting with tidal force. Her hair had grown plenty, and was constantly exasperating. More than once, she’d entertained the notion of chopping it short all over again. Every time she lost her temper and wound up with a snarled mess full of lightning, that urge grew. Only the fact that it would render all their hard work for nothing stayed her hand.

Briar, Sandry, and Daja were present for the spells, just as they had been every step of the way. It was long and tedious work, with a few pauses to shake out her hands.

“My fingers are starting to cramp!” she complained, but her mock grouchiness convinced none of them. Tris radiated the satisfaction of a job well done, a challenge met.

She started to tire at the end, transferring all of her stored power from threads to her new braids, but the others bolstered her, lending their strength to hers. Daja helped draw power into braids like wire through a drawing plate. Sandry spun it around the core of Tris’s hair. Briar wound power around her hair like vines working their way through cracks in a wall.

In the end, they succeeded. Some of it would eventually turn out to be a terrible idea, rain making her hair go all frizzy and beginning to erode the containment on all of her other braids. The rain would have to go. But the rest of it was _good_. It would make a difference for the rest of her life.

Sandry was delighted. “Now you have a mage kit you can carry with you everywhere!”

And Tris agreed. All of her foster siblings could feel her relief. The safety and security of knowing that she could carry her elements with her from now on.


End file.
